Page 30 of Counting the Days
Rhea clocked shelves full of yoga mats. Images of Danny on a yoga retreat in some exotic place surrounded by taut models filled her head. She shook it off; she did not drive five hours along a suicide cliff to think about Danny, she came to figure out why she was too broken to be a married mother of three who lived in a Craftsman.
Rhea looked up at a few stragglers entering just in time. Her lungs collapsed when she saw Danny Beckett among them.
Danny.
Her first reaction was to stare at him for an aggressive length of time, because although her eyes were screaming to her brain,Danny Beckett just walked in the door,her brain kept rejecting the information.
Her second reaction was to look for an emergency exit so she could run to her car, leave her suitcase behind, and keep driving north until she reached Canada. She was making peace with assuming a new identity and mastering a Canadian accent, but the only exit was the door Danny had just walked through.Besides, he had already seen her and dropped his bottom lip in amused surprise.
“Hi,” he mouthed with the most infuriating smile.
“Hi,” she mouthed tersely back.
Of all the soulmate workshops in all the world, Danny Beckett had to walk into hers. Rhea decided she would sit through the Welcome Circle, then go back to her room, pack her bags, and eat the twelve hundred dollars she had shelled out for the weekend.
The gorgeous gray couple was speaking, but Rhea could not hear them; her eyes were glued to the floor, her ears flooded with white noise. It was not until the woman next to her started talking that she realized what was going on.
“Hi,” the woman said to the circle, “I’m Wendy, I’m from San Fran, and I’m here ’cause I’ve read all your books and they’ve helped me so much, and I just wanted to learn from you guys in person.”
The group nodded a silent acknowledgment of Wendy while the leaders said, “Bless you,” and “We’re so grateful to have you here.”
All eyes landed on Rhea, including Danny’s. He was sitting directly across from her, repressing a grin.
“Um, my, uh, name’s Rhea, and I live in Topanga, and I’m here ’cause a friend of mine recommended it.” Rhea said this at 2x speed.
She resumed looking at the floor and did not look up again until Danny spoke.
“I’m Danny. I’m from L.A. I’ve been to Esalen a bunch and saw a flyer for this and just thought it sounded…interesting. I have no idea what to expect, but I’m low-key terrified.”
This elicited empathetic chuckles from the group. One woman even said, “Uh-huh, same,” which was rewarded withmore chuckles. Rheahatedhow charming Danny was, and she wanted to tell the woman to stop flirting with her boyfriend.
After the circle was done introducing themselves, the leaders informed them they would be spending the weekend doing trust exercises, intimacy exercises, dance therapy, and other nausea-inducing things that made Rhea want to weep.
She almost walked out at the phrase “dance therapy.” She would under no circumstances be dancing in front of the Edible Gardener. She had to keep reminding herself he was also voluntarily attending this embarrassing weekend for weirdos. Yes, Danny had just discovered her yearning for a soulmate, how broken she was, how she required special training to learn what everybody else already knew,but he was there too. And yet, when Danny went to a soulmate workshop, it seemed brave and compelling, but when Rhea went to the same workshop, it seemed sad and cringe. She willed the Welcome Circle to end so she could get back in her car and escape.
“…and we didn’t meet until after we had each done the inner work,” the female leader was explaining. “I was married twice before I met Gary. Always attracting the wrong guy, never able to understand why…”
Despite Rhea’s desperation for this humiliation to end, she found herself leaning forward; this woman was speaking her language.
“This weekend you’ll be connecting on deep levels, throwing away the shrouds of protection we created in our childhoods and learning how to letyourself outand let someone elsein.”
At these words, Rhea found herself leaning back, looking at the clock, and trying to remember if the schedule stated when the Welcome Circle would be wrapping up.
“Let’s have everyone stand, we’re going to do a warm-up exercise to prepare for the intimacy of the weekend,” Gary said.
Gary and the female leader, whose name Rhea did not know, told them to walk around the room making eye contact with every person they passed. Rhea walked around, but instead of making eye contact with anyone, she tried to get close enough to the door to slip out unnoticed.
“Now, we want you to stop in front of the person closest to you,” Gary said.
Rhea had ended up right next to Wendy again; she realized she was subconsciously following Wendy around because she had warm energy.
“Look into your partner’s eyes, and I want each of you to say, ‘I belong to you. You belong to me.’ Then part ways with a hug.”
Rhea swallowed heavily. She was grateful she had been stalking Warm Wendy and did not have to do this abhorrent task with a more intimidating individual. They looked into each other’s eyes and said what they had been ordered to say. Warm Wendy said it with true depth and feeling. Rhea said it like her mom had told her to say sorry to a kid she’d just offended.
They hugged and continued to walk around the room. The leaders announced they wanted the group to keep doing this exercise until they had connected with every seeker in the pavilion. Rhea appreciated them referring to herself and her fellow attendees as “seekers” instead of incels.
Rhea moved toward the door, but each time she got close, a seeker stopped her, told her she belonged to them and they belonged to her, then forced her into a hug. She could not figure out how to flee without causing a disturbance. She had Danny’s exact location programmed into her brain like a GPS and knew where he was at all times. She managed to avoid him until the very end. He was standing close, and she turned to him, helpless against his magnetic pull. They locked eyes, and he flashed an ironic smile.
